Banners Should Be Banned—the Facts Demand It

Notice that banner ad, bottom of screen on the right, receives very little attention (courtesy of Sharethrough)

Finally, a scientific study to hit us over the head with the proof: no one pays attention to banner ads.

I am delighted that we now have this evidence, but I am convinced that we don’t have the rest of what we need to ban banner ads for good. First, most newsrooms are not equipped to create the type of native ads that users seem to be more likely to see and to enjoy. Banner ads may not be effective, but they are the easiest to produce.

While several of the largest newspaper companies in the world continue to develop their own “content studios” —where teams of journalists and ad people collaborate on the creation and production of native ads—it is a phenomenon that is not yet within reach of medium size and smaller publications.

I am hoping that by the end of 2015, we will see more medium size dailies developing their own content studios to start the journey towards weaning themselves (and their users) from banner ads that as the folks from Nielsen and the native advertising company Sharethrough have told us, are not at all effective.

Their study included neuroscience and eye-tracking technology to study how readers process different types of online ads.